Razoredged
by Aleph Null
Summary: When your parents are dead, you're brought up in a broom cupboard and everyone expects you to save the world, life hurts. Learning to control the pain causes scars. A boyfriend like Draco Malfoy finds that sexy.


Harry Potter was a miracle. The boy had lost his parents (so tragic), been brought up by the unloving Dursleys (so cruel) and fought for seven years against the wicked You Know Who (so evil), and here he was at 20 the seeker for the Chudley Cannons and the toast of the wizarding world. He had won Witch Weekly's Most Swoonsome Wizard award for three years running, until they had declared him Lifetimely Lustworthy and politely excluded him from the competition. The Daily Prophet considered him an Example to Young Magicals Everywhere, and regularly trotted out tales of his bravery that got ever more impressive as the years went on.  
  
Draco Malfoy thought Harry Potter was a miracle too. He was a celebrity, yet modest to the point of shyness. He had performed spells that a bare handful of wizards had ever mastered. He was handsome, and kind, and most miraculously of all, he was Draco's.  
  
When they had first got together, Draco had spent hours learning every line and sinew of Harry's body. He knew the little dent in Harry's right wrist, the way the tendons on his arm rippled as Harry tapped his fingers on the table, and the reaction he got when he nibbled the base of his neck. He knew how Harry slept curled up (the influence of the cupboard under the stairs, he supposed) and the tuft of hair he had that just wouldn't lie flat. What he did not know was his scars.  
  
Of course he knew the famous lightening bolt that had faded to a silver grey since the fall of Voldemort - everyone did. What Draco did not ask about was the network of blips and dashes, that lay scattered all over his body, raised above and paler than Harry's already pale skin. Before they had even kissed, Harry had seen him looking at them and said, voice neutral, "Scars and tattoos are personal. You have the latter, and I don't ask about it because what matters is who you are now. Scars and tattoos are the past. Do me the same favour," and that was all that he had ever said on the matter.  
  
Even when they'd got together and were so obsessed with each other that sometimes it almost hurt to think about it, Draco never asked. Whenever he caught sight of another thin red line he just put it down to Hedwig getting annoyed (although she was calm now in her old age) or Harry being clumsy (despite having the grace and reflexes of the world-class seeker he was). Some people scar easily, he thought, and put the loose razorblades in the bathroom cabinet down to Harry's obsession for being close-shaven.  
  
And then he stopped, kicked himself in the head, wondered what the fuck he was doing and lay awake for night after night as his lover slept innocent as a baby beside him. We get used to broken things, you see, put a book beneath the uneven leg of a table and forget that anything is wrong. Whatever we see everyday we take to be normal, and Draco was a child who had grown up in a terrorist cell. He had survived through first denial and then desensitisation, so please, don't blame him for what happened next.  
  
Draco hadn't slept for a week and neither had Harry, and neither of them said a word about it. They slept apart from each other in the same bed, with no contact but a goodnight kiss as brief as it was perfunctory. Draco could feel something in the air, some sort of tension between them, but it didn't feel like the couldn't-keep-my-hands-off-you-if-I-wanted-to sexual tension that he knew how to deal with, and so he kept quiet.  
  
If Draco was muted that week, Harry was silent, wrapped up in his own world and never even making eye contact. Draco watched his body twitch with pent up energy, the tension in every muscle hard and defined. It was Sunday night, and neither of them were in a fit state to go to work tomorrow, pretend that everything was normal. Sitting watching a film on television, Draco drank steadily yet remained depressingly sober. He drank the Malibu that had sat at the back of the cupboard for months; Harry hated the stuff and so did he, but he choked it down for lack of knowing anything else to do.  
  
Ten past midnight the film ended and they went to bed, Harry falling between the sheets without fully undressing. He pretended to sleep, Draco pretended to sleep, and they both pretended not to notice the other's deception. Draco wondered how long they had left. Six days? Six weeks? No more, surely. It was just a matter of time.  
  
Some point later Harry got up and padded over to the bathroom. He fiddled for something then turned to leave, and for a moment Draco saw him, standing in the doorframe with his face hidden in silhouette, until he switched the light off and returned. He climbed back into bed, slipping a flash of silver on to the bedside table in a gesture Draco barely noticed. They both stopped breathing.  
  
So this is it, Draco thought. I should stop him - fuck that, I must stop him. But his muscles wouldn't move, and he lay frozen, feigning sleep, as he watched his lover roll up his left sleeve and pick up the flash of silver, revealing it to be a razorblade. Harry made the cuts slight and shallow, marking a place of tension, his breathing slow and controlled and his face alive with a shock that was not pain, not at first. Three cuts, parallel, neat, unreal for a few seconds until the blood started beading. He exhaled, deeply, his eyes closing and muscles relaxing, and just like that Draco felt the aura of tension vanish.  
  
Draco had seen a lot, seen more than he'd wanted, but he'd never seen anyone so willingly mark their own flesh. There are no boundaries, he thought, anything can be done and taken, and with that a switch tripped in his brain. Hand on Harry's shoulder he hauled him roughly round into a kiss that was messy and needy and all-consuming. They pulled away, hearts pounding and eyes wild, Draco yanking Harry's t-shirt off and not caring when he flinched as it pressed over the cuts. Beneath it were revealed more, one day old, two day old, carving up Harry's chest in a chronology of pain.  
  
"Kiss them better."  
  
There was no refusing. 


End file.
